Meh. This was okay. I thought the story had a great premise.

Setting:
I really loved the idea of Beau Rivage. But I think there was so much more that Cross could have done to give it more personality. I mean, she had this FAIRY TALE TOWN for goodness' sake. Liven it up. Instead the kids spent their time at concerts and beaches and getting drunk at parties. Seriously? Couldn't they do something more fairytale-ish? What? Was Cross trying to show the readers that the story characters are just like regular teens? Then there is no point. I just wish there could have been more. Except for the candy cottage, there wasn't much to say that it was very different than any other town.

Characters:
There is a slew of characters here, and some I like more than others. Obviously. But it is more because of how they are written than because of the characters themselves. Take Viv for instance. There is so much more that could have been done with 'Snow White'. Like, I don't know. Make her actually like SNOW WHITE instead of some spoiled brat. Or make Freddie more three dimensional instead of a doormat who just wants to be a hero. Give these characters some depth.

Relationships:
This is new for me. I usually don't focus on them as much, but since this book was nothing but relationships, here we are.
Blue/Mira- They're both dumb. Blue was wasting his time, pining over a girl in love with his brother. Honestly, if it took her that long to figure Felix out, she deserved to have the life sucked out of her.
Felix/Mira- What an idiot! All the signs were there. I get that he could 'charm' her, but she even considered the truth and still rejected it. I wanted there to be a spin so badly. Like maybe Felix saving Mira from Blue, but no. Predictable.
Freddie/Mira- Basically everyone and Mira. I mean, come on. He was like a wet, sad puppy. And even worse, that's all he was meant to be. I really wanted some closure for him. Like for him to get with a fairy or something. Just so he isn't the nice loser at the end.
Viv/Henley- What kind of messed up relationship is this? Basically, he is destined to simultaneously love and hate her. She teases and drags him around. It was just annoying.
Layla/Rafe- Honestly, I think this had the potential to be the most interesting relationship in the story, but they nearly completely ignored it. Barely gets a mention. Of course, Beauty and the Beast was always one of my favs, so I'm biased.

Plot:
So predictable. The only surprise would have been Mira finding her parents. Otherwise, you knew who the bad guy was. You knew what he was going to do. You knew who was going to save her. I kept hoping that something would pop up and surprise me, but no. 

Overall:
I really really liked the idea of this book, which is how it earned the three stars. But the execution left something to be desired.

Mirabelle has been raised by her extremely overprotective guardians, knowing that her parents died in a fire on the night of her christening. She desperately wants answers about her parents and her background, but her two guardians are none too forthcoming, and so Mira feels she has no choice but to run away. To make sure that the women who raised her don't immediately track her to Beau Rivage, the place where she was born, she spends the six months before her 16th birthday creating a fictional boyfriend with whom she's been corresponding, so they'll believe she's run away with him.

 

She seems clever, does Mira, until she arrives in Beau Rivage and loses all critical faculites upon meeting handsome Felix Valentine, who runs a hotel and offers to let her stay there free of charge, out of the goodness of his apparent heart. Of course, his younger brother Blue does whatever he can to get Mira out of the family hotel, warning her away from Felix and offering to pay for her to stay pretty much anywhere else. While Mira finds the younger Valentine brother obnoxious and rude, her infatuation with his older brother is pretty much instantaneous. When Felix isn't around, she questions her strong feelings, but the minute he shows up again, she forgets anything but how handsome and charming he is. Of course, Mira doesn't have much of a plan, she just wants to search cemeteries until she can find where her parents were buried. Felix offers to help her, Blue keeps trying to get her to leave the hotel.

 

Mira's guardians haven't really told her much about the place where she was born, and Mira discovers that Beau Rivage is not your average little sea side town. Blue has a very strange group of friends, all of whom keep mentioning "curses". The singer in Blue's band keeps coughing up flowers and actual gem stones, his puppy dog of a friend Freddie keeps being followed by birds and tiny woodland creatures, the girl Ivy is deathly pale, complains about her stepmother and occasionally speaks to the mirror, who speaks back. It seems a lot of fairy tales come true in sinister ways in this town, and the strange birthmark on her lower back marks Mira as another fairy cursed teenager. She's a magical sleeper, probably due to cut or prick her finger and sleep in an enchanted sleep until her prince rescues her with a kiss. Said prince seems destined to be Freddie, not that she has any time for him, what with making googly eyes at Felix and trading sarcastic, but flirty barbs with Blue. Will Blue find her parents' grave? Will she even make it to her sixteenth birthday before her curse comes true? Will she discover why Blue is so eager to get her away from Felix, and what exactly Felix is hiding in that hotel room he's asked her to stay out of?

 

Kill Me Softly is yet another book I bought in an e-book sale at some point, because the cover was pretty and the book was recommended on some review site or other. I do like the modern fairy tale twists, complete with some really rather dark edges, such as actual death and disfigurement being the side effect of some of the curses. I liked some of the contemporary updates to the various fairy tale figures, and the sinister atmosphere permeating Beau Rivage. 

 

I didn't like just how incredibly naive and TSTL Mira is for a lot of the book. Yes, I get that Felix' presence actually cast an enchantement over her, but every time she's away from him she starts questioning herself, and it's one thing to believe Blue is just trying to warn her away because of some sort of twisted sibling rivalry. When pretty much every single other person she meets in Beau Rivage suggests that Felix is bad news and that she should stay away from him, perhaps she should be a bit more wary. Besides, a 21-year-old who will happily offer a 15-year-old free accommodation, seemingly no strings attached, that should set off "stranger danger" alarm bells, little girl. What you absolutely don't want to do is suggest that you move into his private suite instead - that's just asking to be sexually propositioned. Have some self respect. 

 

Because Mira was quite so unbelievably bad at taking care of herself, the things that were actually enjoyable got overshadowed. I don't think I was surprised by a single one of the plot developments either, and not just because I've read more than my fair share of fairy tales over the years. I suspect most people could see the big plot beats a mile away. I can see on Goodreads that there is a companion novel to this one, dealing with Snow White Ivy and the gardener who's doomed to cut out her heart when her step-mother finally snaps, but I'm not interested enough to seek it out. There is a lot of potential here, but it sadly doesn't play out.

This wasn't bad, but I was kind of hoping for more.

 

It was an idea I have always loved and I always just jump on: a fairy tale universe that is part of our own world, with all of the knowledge that comes from that. Fairy tale characters that know their stories? I am absolutely there every time the idea is presented. I love watching how that can twist things, and in this universe, things certainly got pretty twisted.

 

It was dark, with evidence that sometimes fairy tales might go technically right but still end up very very wrong. It also included the darker side of fairy tales. Things do not always end up happily ever after in every original Grimm version of the story, remember, and even those where the main character ends up with what they want and it doesn't end up twisted, sometimes sideline characters end up badly punished. Cinderella's stepsisters don't exactly consider their ending "happy," I'm sure, and this novel does deal with that aspect of fairy tale stories.

 

My primary problem with story was not the plot, or at least not really. The problem was the plot as it intersected with the characters, especially our main character, Mira. Mira has a classic fairy tale back story, with dead parents and guardians who are clearly keeping something from her For Her Own Good. Being a teenager (and also just a curious person, really), she wants to know more, and thus she ends up in the very strange town of her birth.

 

Mira, to be completely blunt, is kind of an idiot. She reacts badly to almost every situation she is put in, she ignores huge, blinking warning signs, and she gets caught up in "romance" and forgets to handle anything else in her life. I don't think there is a single situation in which she actually learns anything of note by herself instead of having someone else go looking for it and hand it to her, with one possible exception towards the end of the book which she should have seen coming. Did she really not realize, even after being told that this was the case, that

she did not know the entirety of the curse Felix and Blue carry? Because I called that bugger as Bluebeard about halfway in. 

(spoiler show)

She doesn't bother trying to learn more about the weird fairy tales she is caught up in, and she (shockingly) ends up in some trouble because of it. She also somehow manages to show no surprise or even interest as some insanely weird shit happens around her throughout a large chunk of the story. Remember the curiosity that dragged her to this town? It disappears pretty much completely once she is there, which was moderately infuriating. I wanted to know what was going on, but does she ask questions, even the ones she came here to get answered? No, of course not. She gets distracted by boys.

 

The ending was also not something I appreciated. It did not deal with those aspects I actually cared about, plot-wise

her parents and where they actually were and any kind of reunion with them, you know Mira, the thing you swore you absolutely needed at the beginning of the novel?

(spoiler show)

and had a bit of a deus ex machina "twist" that just felt tacked on and vaguely annoying.

Oh, really? You can just have a fairy godmother change his curse now and ALSO she can turn back time to make sure it is changed in the best possible way? Really? Where did that come from except magic plot land? 

(spoiler show)

 

In the end, the ideas presented and the clever twists on fairy tales were dragged down by a plot that does not end well and gets derailed by stupidity and a main character that was annoying at best most of the time. I would like to see more in the universe (and I probably will pick up another book), but preferably with cleverer characters. 

Because I read so many fairy tale retellings, this one kept coming up, and I kept ignoring it, seeing those magic, off-putting words (or so I thought ): "A modern reimagining." Ugh, no thank you! How could that possibly be as creative, as fun, as a fantasy world? I had visions of Once Upon a Time dancing in my head (I do love that show, but the cheese factor is starting to kill me!) even as every recommendation referred to Cross' work as dark, edgier than most, an intriguing prospect that finally made me pick the book up.

And I realized I'd been so wrong. This is modernized fairy tales done right. It reminded me a bit of Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms (I did mention I read a LOT of retellings, right?) with people fated, born to relive traditional fairy tale roles, except in the modern world. I like that idea, of someone finding out they're a "Sleeping Beauty" and the boy next door is a "Prince Charming" who might just be the one to save them. And that the heroes and heroines can be and often are victims of their "blessings" just added another rich layer to it (and made the reader realize just how awful fairy tales can be for those who are supposed to live through them!)

With Mira, Cross does something truly brave: she dares to let her make unlikable and occasionally really dumb decisions. There is no one, I have learned from personal experience, less capable of making their own choices than a fifteen year old who's shouting that they can make their own choices. And the author's aware of this, using it. I once said that I love challenging female characters, and Mira is now at the top of that list; she challenged me, and even if I didn't love her as a person, I recognized her as one, and could even identify,even as I winced and cringed.

Bluebeard is a fairy tale that doesn't get used a lot in these things, because of how dark it is. And, wow, it's used to wonderful effect here! And I do genuinely love Blue; not just in the way that I feel most YA authors manipulate me into wanting me to fall in love with their male romantic lead, but truly, I enjoyed him as a character, the dork. And the way the Bluebeard story plays out... It was so well done.

Which leads me to the ending. How Mira defeats Felix made me smile at the cleverness, and... I've seen the charge that the very end, the "solution," is too convenient, too trite, and I disagree. While Mira popping in her fairy godmothers' facing and telling them to soften the Bluebeard curse as they softened the sleeping Beauty curse might have felt that way, cheap, but for the fact that Blue tells her about the room, that she has that knowledge, and they trust each other enough to stay together, makes it something much different, subverting, in my opinion, the typical happily ever after, making it more real, more grounded.

I ran out and instantly bought Tear You Apart and the novellas After the Ball and Twin Roses for more Beau Rivage goodness. I think it's safe to say that I'm in love! (And, please,support Sarah Cross, buy the books! Her publisher has recently gone out of business; I don't know what this means for the future of the Beau Rivage series, but if you read it,and enjoy it, let her know!)

Fairytales are one of my favorite things, but fairytale mashups, or "broken" fairytales, are even cooler! I recently read and loved STITCHING SNOW (by RC Lewis), as well as CINDER and the entire series by Marissa Meyer. I think readers who loved those will love TEAR YOU APART.

It starts out with our main character, Viv, who has a "snow white" curse. This means that, at some point in her life, she's destined to be murdered by the huntsman, or put to an endless sleep by her evil stepmother. In this book, the stepmother is seriously evil, and a little bit MILF-ish *yeah, I just said MILF), and it's hilarious! A perfect way to turn the evil stepmother character on its head. The huntsman is Viv's lifelong best friend and true love...which also creates some pretty interesting moments between the two of them.

When Viv is finally scared for her life that she's going to either die or be "put to sleep", she goes to the Underworld. This setting is awesome, because it's basically the typical Underworld setting that we know about from stories, but inside of the castle, there's a constant ball. The "dancing princess" fairytale is in here, and this is where Viv meets her Prince Charming. In the stories, Prince Charming is supposed to be...well, charming. But in this story--and I won't spoil it---I think readers will have mixed feelings towards him. And it's meant to be that way!

Overall, I won't give much away, because this book is full of lots of fun twists and turns and curses and secrets...but I loved it! If you're a fan of ONCE UPON A TIME, CINDER, or anything fairtytale-esque, pick this one up!